Growing lettuce in FLA

From a post over on the Florida Forum of GardenWeb... my thoughts on salad greens in FLA:

i direct-sowed a bunch of lettuce in september but nothing came up (but the brassicas all came up--broc, collards, rocket). christine (happly_fl_gardener) probably correctly diagnosed the problem as soil fungus, and the small seeds couldn't germinate. (maybe dusting them with fungicide or soaking them in a bit of weak need might have helped.) in the past, i've always direct-sowed my lettuce, but typically i don't plant it until mid-november or later.

at the beginning of october i sowed a bunch of red sails lettuce (from tony--thanks!) in a large windowbox in a mostly-soiless mix, and they all germinated. i've also got a bunch of jericho lettuce going in windowboxes...

anyway, long story short, i learned some things: soil's just to microbiologically active when temps are above, say, 80 here in florida. little seeds (like carrots, parsley, lettuce) don't germinate because they rot or are rendered otherwise sterile. if you want to start lettuce early, i think a soil-less or nearly so mix is necessary. if you want to direct sow, then wait until things cool down--evening temps below 60.

Summer plantings...

Even though we're forecast to have a very cool week (highs in the 60s... in March! That's been rare the past few years...), I decided to transplant and seed some of my plants for the summer season before heading to work today.... Very briefly:

1. Sungold Tomato, the most prolific, tastiest tomato I grow
2. Two cucumbers that I started a few weeks ago in cups, from Pinetree: BUSH CROP (55 days)
   and SALAD BUSH (F1 Hybrid 56 days)
3. Goose Creek Tomato (thanks, Bill!)
4. my "Seminole Squash" wilding from this past fall
5. Rattlesnake Beans (several weeks going now)
   
6. Cherokee Purple (from winter garden)
   
7. Better Boy (from winter garden)
   

I already have a number of peppers going: Jalapeno and Ancho (both sown sometime this winter); and Tabasco, Pimiento de Padron, and banana peppers, all survivors from last spring. Many of my peppers are in pots, but the ones in the ground do pretty well and are less of a hassle to keep watered.

Some of my lettuce crops have bolted; they've been in the ground for months, so regardless of warm or cold temperatures, these were bound to bolt soon. I plan to replace them soon with Queensland lettuce from ECHO and more cuttings from my Okinawan Spinach.

With the exception of cowpeas and sweet potatoes, that'll be it for my summer veg garden. The cukes will be destroyed by the pickleworm by mid-May (sigh) The runner beans and tomatoes will produce into July, when they'll burn out or begin to suffer too badly from pests. I'll harvest sweet potatoes and cowpeas from mid-June until frost. I might try some yucca this summer.

Greens in the garden...

Agina Cutting Celery (Pinetree).... Like celery, minus the crunch.

Upland Cress. Mmmmm... Prolific. Crunchy. Nicely bitter.

Red Sails lettuce and Chervil.

Garden happenings...

A warm day today, though that's predicted to change early this week, with temperatures dipping back into the upper thirties. I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the garden, trying to get things back into shape after the path and patio work. I noticed that my carambola and limão 'Cravo' had finally sprouted, and brought them outside to soak up the rays.

My friend Bill picked up me up an 'Owari' satsuma grafted onto Flying Dragon rootstock. I have a couple of other trees on Dragon: A 'Hamlin' orange (our 'native' DeLand orange) and a 'Honeybell' tangerine. The Dragon rootstock is dwarfing, keeping trees to below ten feet -- though from what I've read, the final verdict isn't in on their ultimate size. Bill has a grapefruit that's already at least nine feet in three years. In any case, the rootstock inarguable brings the trees into production earlier -- Bill's trees produced abundantly this year. My two trees went in the ground only last year, so I haven't had any fruits.

At Lowes, I picked up a Sanbokan Lemon (Citrus sulcata) in a gallon pot for ten bucks... I think I'll grow it in a container, at least for this season. I swear, that's the last citrus I buy.

Let's see... In the veg beds: I'm really frustrated with my collards this season. I bought some plants at Lowes and I guess they must have been bum: Planted right next to Rappini, and while the Rappini has grown well, the collards are still tiny. The first salad greens of the season (planted the third week of September, so four months ago) are about to go to seed (which I'll collect). I have a bunch of 'Red Sails' just now coming into harvest size. To ensure salad until mid-May, I planted more 'Summer Glory' lettuce mix (Parks) last week, so when the Sails come down, there will be more rabbit food to replace it. Strawberries have finally started to produce well -- both patches yield a big handful a day. 'Purple Cherokee' tomatoes are just about ripe. 'Little Fingers' eggplant is recovering well from the freeze. Carrots need to be pulled, and 'Sea Foam' chard is ready to pick again.

Finally, I got in the mail earlier this week two figs that were recommended to me on the Fig Forum at GardenWeb: 'LSU Purple' and 'Celeste.' I got them at Johnson Nursery. They were smallish, maybe thirty inches (pruned) and the trunks were chopstick thick. No complaints, since they were only ten bucks each. Right now, they're sharing a large (thirty-gallon) pot. That brings to five my fig varieties: 'Alma,' 'Brown Turkey' and 'Kadota.' Because of their susceptibility to nematodes, the only fig in the ground is 'Alma.' If it grows without much problem, I'll transfer the others into the ground, too.

Winter Density Lettuce

I started the seeds for this Winter Density (from Pinetree) at the very end of November, so six weeks from sowing. You can see Red Sails next to it. Red Sails grows prolifically, and is a first-rate cut lettuce. But it gets banged up like nothing else in a heavy rainstorm; I've had to pinch it back severely to deal with damaged leaves. The Winter Density, on the other hand, is much sturdier.

Garden booty

It's been pretty nice, more or less seasonable the last week. School's back in session, and I had the flu earlier this week, so I didn't have time to do anything in my plot the past week. Nature managed without me...

The carrots are Adelaide, which I planted way back on October 14. So much for sixty days to harvest, granted it was in December and January. I pulled twenty carrots from one half of a window box that measured six inch by twenty-four inches... So that's twenty carrots in one-half of a square foot. Impressive.

Those are French Breakfast radishes. I didn't have my usual trouble with splits for whatever reason. In the corner is a large bunch of collards and some turnip greens, Turnip Toppers. I won't probably grow turnip greens again, since I like collards much more.

I also picked a eight quarts of a mix of Apollo arugula and Red Sails lettuce. My Winter Density salad has really taken off, a lovely dark green and very upright leafed-lettuce. I left it for another day.